That Kiss
by Alithea
Summary: Nenene is running from what she wants and regretting the past after a long night of writing. Yuri warnings. implied NeneneYomiko, YomikoNancy, NeneneNancy


**Title: That Kiss  
Rating: PG-13  
Shoujo-ai/Yuri Warnings  
****Characters are not mine I am just borrowing.  
Poetry is mine.  
****Notes: Originally written as part of the Yuri Challenge Weekly Drabble Challenge. May require further editing.  
**

It the early morning hours Nenene still found herself awake as she plugged away at her latest novel. Her fingers moving rapidly over the keyboard as the story in her mind moved from her fingertips to the computer screen. She was caught in the stream of inspiration, and because inspiration is fickle, and the Muses playfully unkind, the flow came to an abrupt stop.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard and her eyes darted to the time on her computer. She blinked, looked back over the half finished sentence she had written, and sighed. With a deep breath Nenene pushed her chair away from the computer, and then she quickly rolled her chair back into place before the monitor to hit "Save" before pushing back again and standing up.

With age Nenene had learned when it was time to walk away from her writing. If her ideas stopped and she was stuck with sudden writer's block she merely stood up and went to get fresh air. There had been a time, and there still were times, when she was able to type on two laptop computers at the same time, each hand moving with furious speed on separate ideas. That kind of inspiration seemed so permanent when she was in high school, but she had come to understand that not everything was steady and nothing was as permanent as she would like.

A half chuckle escaped her lips and she padded down the stairs into her living room.

The sun was not ready to come up. There was but the dim and pale threat of the new day on the horizon, and the color of the sky moved from dark shades of purple to a thin line of pale blue. The morning star gave a twinkle and the moon was already beginning to hide her face from the world. It was a beautiful sight but it was not going to be enough to bring her back to her writing.

As late as it was, she was not tired. Nenene was still in recovery from the rush and excitement of being lost in her writing. Her mind was still swimming in the haze of her words and occasionally she would mutter the half finished sentence that so desperately wanted to be finished.

She shook her head and decided to walk herself down to the coffee shop around the corner. It would just be opening up for the morning, and it would be a good place to unwind. As she pulled a sweater on, her gaze moved towards the stairs and she thought about Yomiko who was probably still asleep or just getting to sleep, the bibliophile's dreams filled with the stories she had read.

There was an odd strain in their relationship. Nenene was always fighting with her feelings, though her feelings were quite clear. She could never say that Yomiko was her first love. She wanted to, but she couldn't. All her reactions to the older woman marked it as such, but after everything that had happened, a few years now passed, but still fresh in the mind, Nenene could only resolve herself to friendship. Friendship that was marked by things yet unwritten and unsaid.

Sometimes Nenene wondered if she was trying to walk away from that friendship the way she walked away from her computer when she experienced writer's block. Didn't she always move away when she felt herself inclined to fall to what she insisted could not be real, or true, or right? Didn't she always have an excuse not to get close to a lot of people?

She bit at the inside of her mouth as she walked to the coffee shop. The thought that she was repeating herself made her angry. It took so much for her to let her guard down. It took so much for her to admit when she made friends. It took so much, and in the end those that were good friends, those that had saved her all moved away. And they were still her friends. And they were all still close. It was the distance though, the distance that liked to play with her mind.

Nenene chided herself as she stepped into the coffee shop and sat down at a booth. She pulled out a notebook and a pen and opened it to a blank page. A waitress came by, took her order, and returned shortly thereafter with a cup of tea for the author. The pen had worked its way into her hands, and it moved across the blank page with the seed of an idea, though not the idea she needed to finish what she had been writing at home.

**Begging and pleading in the heart of me  
****There is a feeling I drown  
****Under work and frustrations  
****There is a feeling I drown  
****It works its way up over and over  
****Gasping and grasping for air  
****For acknowledgment  
****But I let it drown  
****Under doubt and fear  
****Under waves of neglect  
****But it holds on  
****It rises  
****And I have to admit  
****I have to see that it will not die as I wish it to  
****It rises  
****To push me down into the sea  
****It rises  
****And I drown**

Blue eyes narrowed at the words and the sentiment on the paper. Nenene took the pen and quickly scribbled over the verse and turned to another blank page in the note book. She leaned back and looked up at the ceiling, and then, with a sigh, brought her gaze back down, starting instantly at the sudden appearance of the woman sitting across from her.

The author shut her eyes and shook her head. She gritted her teeth and pushed her temper away as much as she could. She looked over at the woman across from her and grimaced.

"I didn't know you were coming to visit," Nenene said.

The woman across from her grinned, and there was the hint of slight mischief in her brown eyes.

Years had passed and Nancy seemed to have changed a lot over that course of time, though Yomiko always denied it. Yomiko always said, whenever Nenene brought it up, that Nancy was always Nancy.

It was hard to dispute that kind of logic, but it did rub the author the wrong way.

Nancy was Nancy.

It was true. She was, but not having known the woman previously the evolution from the shy, scared woman with acute memory loss, to the confident, sharp, and elegant woman she had become was something of a shock. It was a gradual shift that occurred with remembrance. Nancy's memories were slow to resurface, but once they started returning there was no stopping the change that occurred. The curvaceous woman had been through a lot, and while the addition of her memory did not make her a completely different person, it did make dealing with her different.

It also made Nenene unavoidably jealous whenever Nancy was around Yomiko, and she hated that feeling.

Nancy shrugged. "I was planning on calling earlier. I just got into town. I was visiting Junior."

The author nodded and took a sip from her cup. She pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose and asked, "How is he?"

The woman grimaced slightly, her cool exterior lost under unwelcome feelings. "He's doing very well. He's a good boy, bright, strong. Finally cut his hair…Michelle is doing an excellent job of raising him."

"Oh, I-"

"Don't apologize. It's what I have to bear. I'm his mother, but no matter how you look at it I was just not meant to raise him. We're close, he and I, but he'll always feel closer to Michelle. She knows exactly what to say to him." Nancy interrupted.

Nenene nodded, and then silence reigned over them. She had regretted asking. She couldn't imagine what it must feel like, and she doubted anyone else could accept it with such grace. There before her was Mata Hari, and yet it was not. A clone of someone could hardly truly be the person they were fashioned after, and in many ways Nancy proved that. Nancy could be deadly if she wanted to be, she could be everything that history wanted her to be. Instead she was loyal, but lost in the world. Nenene wondered if she tried to atone for her past. She wondered if Nancy went away and traveled as penance, of never knowing what she could do to be sorry enough for what she had done, even if she could not remember all of it.

"Having trouble sleeping?" Nancy asked, breaking the silence. "I didn't think you'd be up so early."

"Something like that," Nenene replied. "I was writing, and well, after that I wasn't very tired so I came here."

"To think?"

The question seemed undeniably pointed and it made the author feel slightly paranoid.

"Uh, no, to-To unwind." She looked at the blank page of her note book and then said reluctantly, "Yomiko will be happy to see you."

"But you aren't." Nancy said in instant response.

Nenene looked up, eyes wide, and then the woman across from her winked.

"As an author you see many things in the world. You're an observer, but so am I, and I know what I see when I look in your eyes." Nancy stated calmly.

"And what do you see?" The opinionated author asked with a huff, irritation rising. A small thought of consternation hitting her, as she knew, deep down, that the irritation was with herself, with her own feelings, and with what she already knew.

"Anger derived from fear," Nancy replied softly. "You want to be the only one that she loves, and instead you're caught between me and her love for books."

Nenene stood up quickly. "You don't know. You don't know anything."

As quickly as she could Nenene reached into her pocket and threw some money on the table. She rushed out of the coffee shop angry at the world around her, when she should have been angry at herself.

Nancy watched the author go and shook her head. She had not wanted to have that conversation, at least not as it happened and not right then, but some things were unavoidable. She reached over and picked up the note book across from her and grinned slightly before looking at the door. Whether they new it or not there were some people that wanted and needed to be chased. She flipped through the pages of angrily crossed out verses, deciphering the full content of only one before closing it and leaving the coffee shop.

**I never should have kissed you  
****Can I blame that on needing you now?  
****I wasted that kiss  
****I wasted time  
****I never should have kissed you  
****The kiss I gave you was thrown away  
****It was unfelt  
****And now  
****Now, when I should kiss you  
****When I should just take your lips  
****And show you what I feel  
****Kiss you with all these feelings that are so real  
****I run away  
****I push you away  
****Staying safe in my position in your life  
****And others have come after me  
****Others have tasted your lips  
****Did they mean it  
****Or have we all just left you  
****With wasted kisses  
****Feelings that weren't real yet  
****Feelings that came with time but too late  
****I never should have kissed you  
****If only so I could kiss you now  
****And have you understand just what that kiss means**

Nenene didn't mutter aloud when she was angry, instead she had a visible mental argument with herself as she moved as quickly as she could to somewhere, anywhere, her feet would carry her. She couldn't exactly go back to her apartment. There really wasn't anywhere that she could go except…Except a place she wasn't sure she wanted to be at, but that was where her feet carried her. Blindly as she walked, her feet brought her to the door of the building and she still had a key.

It was being used as a giant bookcase and she had long since given up trying to get it organized properly.

There just weren't enough bookcases in the city, and so as she moved through the door and up the stairs she passed scores of stacks and piles of hard cover novels and paperbacks. It was Yomiko's treasure trove and the bibliophile and paper master could, in an instant, find the book she was looking for among the collection.

Nenene moved further up though. She climbed the stairs until she reached the roof and once she was there she stepped out into the fresh morning air, shut the door, and sank back against it.

She was being foolish. She knew she was being foolish, but knowing a thing isn't always enough to make someone do something about it. And the thought truly and deeply cut her, a sharp wound, and a betrayal to her constant denial.

She stood up and violently kicked the door. It didn't budge and it hurt her foot, but the pain of the act was not enough to cover what she was really feeling.

It was so annoying. It was so irritating that Nancy had been right, and about everything, and without knowing the true depth of it all. It wasn't that Nenene was caught between Yomiko's love for Nancy and her love for books. It was that Nenene was caught between Nancy, and books, and him…Him, her mentor, who she loved so dearly, and lost so suddenly. That man the paper master had lost all reason over, all control over, apparently twice.

It was the feeling, the knowing that she could never be the one. She would always be second or third to a greater love, always, always, and the threat that Yomiko would run away again to shield and protect some other thing. She would run away and upon being found run again.

Her heart had never broken so much than that day, and despite the ultimate out come of what occurred in the past, Nenene still found that fear. She found that fear and it kept her from saying the things she wanted to say. It kept her from bridging the gap between just friends to something more. It was so much easier to repress it all and pretend. So much easier to write the fantasy of their friendship in her head and linger on the hope that it would stay that way and never change.

Nenene had sunk back down to the floor. She pulled her knees into her chest and sat against the punished door to the roof crying. She felt like such a child.

It was long after her rushed and rapid sobs had slowed to a constant ache that she felt a hand on her shoulder. She instinctively pulled away from it and then looked up slowly. Brown eyes looked down at her with such concern she didn't have any resistance left. She shut her eyes and grabbed onto the woman tightly until at last her body relaxed and she could move away.

There was nothing Nancy could really say. There were words that sat on her lips and were prepared to comfort, but they seemed so useless. She held out the notebook and Nenene took it quickly.

"Do you think it's too late to start again?" Nancy asked after a few moments.

Nenene nodded her head.

"I thought second chances were great fodder for storytellers."

"Only if you believe in them," Nenene replied wiping her eyes dry, tired of feeling lost.

"I believe in them." The older woman said softly. "I have to. They're all I have." She inched closer. "We both blew it in the beginning with her. Though all things considered, I believe you have more of a right to that second chance than I do."

The writer frowned and shook her head. She stood up, her legs shaky, and moved to the edge of the roof peering out at the blue sky and the bright morning, sounds of traffic and birds fluttering about overloading her senses. She looked at the ground and noticed that Nancy had followed her over.

"Why don't you just get it over with and take her away?" Nenene asked bitterly. "It's what you're good at and I'd hate to stand in your way."

"Because that's not what she wants, Nenene." Nancy said.

"And you know what she wants?"

"I told you, I'm an observer. I see a lot of things."

The writer turned around, visibly angry, ready to yell and tell the other woman off. Ready to be strong where she felt she was being weak. Stopped short by the look on the other woman's face.

"You know after I regained more of my memory and saw all that I had lost, I swore I would never let what I wanted go again." Nancy began. "I lost everything. I can't even be the mother my child needs me to be. I couldn't be the friend Yomiko needed, and I most certainly could never replace you in her heart. You and I, we're selfish, but she has room for us both and it's all equal shares. It's all the same innocent, quirky, strange love in her heart."

Nenene shook her head, and looked down.

Nancy moved over and pulled the writer's gaze up. "Don't run away. Don't run away from her it'll break her heart."

She moved closer and left a small kiss on the writer's forehead.

"I don't know how this can possibly work," Nenene said eventually, unable to move.

"It doesn't have to, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't take that one step you've been avoiding." The older woman responded.

**Have I wasted my time  
****With all these inconvenient kisses  
****Do my lips tell the truth  
****When they touch yours  
****And do they mean it  
****When they leave passion behind  
****Oh I want your heart  
****My lips burn for yours  
****Don't let me waste my time  
****Can't you see…  
****I want your kisses to be mine**

End


End file.
